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Mail privileges of Guantanamo Bay detainees
There have been mixed reports of the limits on Guantanamo captives' mail privileges. Master Sergeant Debra A. Tart's account On July 23, 2002 Master Sergeant Debra A. Tart gave an interview to the American Forces Press Service about the captives' mail privileges. The report asserts that the captives were all offered an opportunity to send a postcard to their family, shortly after their arrival, telling their family where they were. Many of the captive's families have reported they didn't learn the captive was in Guantanamo until 2006, when the Department of Defense was forced to publish a list of all the captives held in Guantanamo. Tart told the American Forces Press Service that the 564 captives had sent out 1,600 pieces of mail, through her office, during the camp's first six months, and had received 300 replies. She added that some captives had sent out mail with the visitors from the International Committee of the Red Cross on their quarterly inspections. Lieutenant Wade Brown's affidavit In response to a habeas corpus petition, on March 25, 2005, First Lieutenant Wade M. Brown submitted an affidavit describing how the captives' email was processed. *Brown reported he had been first the assistant officer in charge, and then the officer in charge, of a staff of sixteen staff who processed the captives' mail. *Brown reported that in the preceding six months his office had processed 14,000 pieces of mail—over two, per captive, per month. *According to Brown: Brown described two of the three routes through which captives were permitted to receive mail: Captives' accounts Some Guantanamo captives, such as Abdul Razzaq Hekmati, testified that during their stay in Guantanamo they had not received a single response to any of the letters they sent out. Lawyers for Mani Al Utaybi described trying to have their first letter delivered to him, to inform him that his relative had secured their helf on his behalf, for over a year prior to his suicide on June 10, 2006—but camp authorities had refused to deliver their mail. : During an interview on Chicago Public Radio's This American Life, Joe Margulies reported : : Carol Rosenberg, writing in the Miami Herald, quoted Kristin Wilhelm, one of the captives' attorneys, about the censorship of hand-drawn greeting cards her client had prepared for her and her colleagues. mirror Recent rule changes allowed captives to be issued crayons, and allowed to make drawings. Her client, Yemeni Suleiman al Nahdi, drew greeting cards for her and her colleagues—which military censors would not allow through. According to Wilhelm: : New rules Captain Patrick M. McCarthy, Joint Task Force Guantanamo's Staff Judge Advocate submitted an affidavit about further restrictions the Department of Defense wanted to place on mail between Guantanamo habeas counsels and their clients. mirror McCarthy asserted that attorneys for the prisoners had provided a copy of a book on Abu Ghraib, a speech given at an Amnesty International conference about the war on terror, and other materials, and that such materials threatened prison security. See also * Guantanamo captives' phone calls * Captive's library in Guantanamo References Category:Guantanamo Bay captives legal and administrative procedures